The present invention relates to a method, a system, and a recording medium to provide services in an online manner, and in particular, to a method, a system, and a recording medium to provide online services including a distributor device disposed between terminal equipment of users requesting services and a plurality of service points providing services for distributing the service requests of the users to the service points.
There has been broadly used a system in which a user accepts an online service of a financial institution via an automatic teller machine (ATM). Moreover, there is appearing a system in which a user accesses, from a personal computer (PC) which is installed in a place of a family or which is carried about as a portable unit, a service point of a financial institution to accept online services therefrom.
However, at present, the service points offer services in a time zone which matches with a time zone of on-duty hours of workers. This restricts the use of the system in holidays and at night.
According to the prior art above, there exists limitation with respect to the time zone of online services offered by the financial institution. The time zone cannot be regarded as sufficient for the user when compared with a service time zone of a convenience store or the like. Although the service time zone of the financial institution is going to be extended, it is difficult because of necessity of machine maintenance or the like that a single service point offers services for a long period of time, for example, 24 hours without interruption. Therefore, the users show a trend of use in which each user selects a service point convenient for the user from a plurality of service points having mutually different service time zones. However, it is troublesome for each user to search out an appropriate service point in consideration of business hours of the service points and to retrieve a line identifier number of a service point as a communication partner to input the number to her or his terminal equipment.